How to Set Up Free Shipping in WooCommerce
Editorial Team
May 10, 2023
Want to know how to set up free shipping in WooCommerce?
Free shipping is the practice of not charging any money for shipping. It’s a powerful tool that, when used right, can multiply your eCommerce store’s sales.
According to research, free shipping motivates 9 out of 10 users to shop online more frequently. Moreover, almost 34% of young users prefer free shipping over discounts.
Utilizing the power of free shipping is crucial if you want to boost your sales.
Luckily, you can offer free shipping in WooCommerce itself without the need to install any extra plugins.
In this blog, we will share an easy process on how to set up free shipping in WooCommerce. This is going to be a step-by-step guide.
So, let’s dive in!
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Imagine two brands offering the same product for $20.
Brand A charges $5 for shipping, while Brand B offers free shipping.
Which one would you choose?
We're willing to bet you'd choose Brand B.
That’s how most users react. Whether it's a new lead or a customer who already shopped at your store, everyone loves free shipping.
A business’s success depends on new customer acquisition and retention rates. With Free shipping, you can increase both conversion and retention rates.
For example, then the company 2 Big Feet increased the conversion rate by 50% by offering free shipping to their customers. Similarly other businesses have seen almost a 48% boost in customer retention after doing the same.
So, free shipping is a proven strategy to grow your eCommerce business.
However, offering free shipping with every order can hamper small and mid-size businesses. So, make sure you have a proper strategy for using Free shipping.
When used with a proper strategy, free shipping can help you unleash your business’s true potential.
Offering free shipping irrespective of which product the user buys is a good marketing strategy. Let’s learn how you can do this in WooCommerce.
The first step is to create a shipping zone or the location where you want to offer free shipping.
Note: A shipping zone is a geographical area to which you ship items. You can define shipping zones as region, country, state, city or zip codes.
For this navigate to WooCommerce ⇒ Settings⇒ Shipping, then click on “Add Shipping Zone”.
Now provide a shipping zone name. After that choose the region, if you want you can choose multiple regions and group them under one zone.
Note: If you want, you can limit free shipping specific zip/postcodes within the chosen area as well.
Now it’s time to add a free shipping method to the chosen zone. For that click on “Add Shipping Method”.
After that choose the “Free Shipping” option from different shipping options available in the drop down and click on “Add Shipping Method” button.
Finally, click on Save changes to update.
You can test the free shipping method by placing an order choosing any location that falls under the shipping zone.
As we created a free shipping zone consisting of Assam and Bihar state of India, we are placing a test order with shipping address set to Assam.
Note: Here we are using the Utopia checkout template by FunnelKit. With FunnelKit you can create high converting sales funnel with order bump and one-click upsell in the easiest way possible.
And that’s it. Now let’s check how you can offer free shipping for orders over a fixed amount.
👉 You can also read How to Integrate Stripe with WooCommerce
Offering free shipping on each delivery irrespective of the order total value can cause you to lose money in your business.
The solution is to put a limit to the total amount so users will only get free shipping if they order products of a certain value.
Let’s check how you can do that.
You can choose the shipping zone you created earlier or create a new one. We are going to choose an existing one. To do so, again navigate to WooCommerce ⇒ Settings ⇒ Shipping and click on the Edit button of your preferred shipping zone.
Now from the shipping method make sure Free Shipping is turned on. After that click on the Edit option to access the settings.
You need to provide the following options to set a minimum order amount for free shipping on the selected zone. Here are the options you need to provide
Finally, click on Save changes to update.
Now again try to place an order to the shipping zone to which you set free shipping on minimum order. Free shipping should be applicable only if the cart total is above the set amount.
In our case, our shipping zone consists of Goa state of India and the minimum order value to enjoy free shipping is $100.
👉 You can also read How to Set Up WooCommerce Payment Plans.
Sometimes you don’t want to offer free shipping to a specific group of people.
For example, maybe you want to provide free shipping for the first order. In such cases, you can provide them with a discount coupon code that they can use to avail the free shipping.
FIrst you need to make sure, users can apply coupons on the cart and check out pages. For that navigate to WooCommerce ⇒ Settings ⇒ General. After that scroll down a little and make sure to check the “Enable the use of coupon codes” option and finally click on Save changes.
The second step is to create a coupon that will offer free shipping. For that navigate to Marketing ⇒ Coupons and click on Add Coupon.
Now provide coupon code and description. You can provide a custom coupon or click on the “Generate Coupon Code” button to get a unique random coupon code.
After that click on the down arrow button to access the other related settings. Here you can
Set up the following options:
Under the Usage limits tab, you can set up
Finally, click on Publish to create the coupon.
Edit the Shipping zone for which you want to set the free delivery coupon code.
Now edit the Free Shipping method for that Zone.
Now provide the following options
After setting up the options, click on Save Changes to update.
We are choosing the first option “A valid free shipping coupon”.
Now place an order and use the coupon you created to avail free shipping
Now you know how to offer free shipping on all products with coupon, without coupon, with minimum order total and also without minimum order total.
But what if you want to offer free shipping only on one specific product?
Well, you can do that as well in WooCommerce. To learn how to move to the next section.
👉 You can also read How to Set Up Google Address Autocomplete in WooCommerce
Follow these steps to offer free shipping on one specific product only:
To create a WooCommerce shipping class for free delivery, go to WooCommerce ⇒ Settings ⇒ Shipping. Then move to the Shipping classes option. After that click on the “Add Shipping Class Button”.
Now provide shipping class title,slug, description and finally click on Save changes.
Similarly create another shipping class for the products for which you want to charge for shipping.
We are going to configure Flat rate shipping to offer free shipping for a single product. To add flat rate shipping go to your target shipping zone. After that click on “Add Shipping Method”, choose Flat Rate from the drop down and finally hit on Add Shipping method.
Note: Flat Rate Shipping is a shipping method included in WooCommerce that allows you define a standard shipping fee for products irrespective of the weight, shape, or size of the shipped item.
To configure the flat rate shipping method, click on the Edit option.
Now change the method title. Then set the “Free Shipping” class cost to 0 and the other one with the amount you want to charge for shipping.
After that click on Save changes.
Now go to the product page that you want to sell with no shipping cost. Under the product data section, move to the Shipping Tab. Now choose the “Free Shipping” from the dropdown as shipping class. Finally update the product.
Similarly add the other class to the products for which you want to charge shipping cost.
Now to test the process place an order with the assigned product only to that shipping zone.
Remember if you order only the assigned product, shipping charge will be free. However, if you order other products along with the free product, you will have to pay a shipping charge.
We hope now you know how easily you can offer WooCommerce free shipping on your website. Move to the next section to find out how you can use free shipping to increase the average order value of your website.
👉 You can also read How to Sell Digital Products with WooCommerce
As mentioned earlier, people feel motivated to shop when offered free shipping. You can use this human psychology to make users buy more and thus increase the average order value of your store.
Wondering how?
Well, the answer is easy. By offering them free shipping on a minimum threshold.
However, if you ask them to buy more products when you are already on the checkout page then it may not work.Users may start to look around and abandon the cart in the middle. Moreover, asking users to go back to shop while they are already on the checkout page will ruin the customer experience.
FunnelKit Cart can solve this issue by offering users in cart recommendations on a slide in cart.
With this WooCommerce plugin, users can access a slide-in cart from anywhere on the site. Moreover, you can offer them upsell and cross sell recommendations on the cart itself. And you can add products to cart front he cart itself to increase order total to avail the free shipping.
Note: Customers can also add variable products from the cart itself.
Let’s have a look at how it works:
Along with Free Shipping, you can also offer Discount and Free gifts as rewards to encourage users to increase their order total.
👉 To learn more about the reward system by FunnelKit, read our blog WooCommerce Cart Upsell: Effective Way to Improve Average Order Value.
If you are not in the mood of reading, you can checkout this video 👇
Offering free shipping in WooCommerce is an easy task. However, you shouldn’t just offer free shipping without doing the due diligence as free shipping might not be the best way to go for small businesses.
However, if you think Free shipping is for you, then we strongly recommend adding FunnelKit cart to your WordPress site.
FunnelKit Cart is user -friendly and ensures users a great shopping experience by gamifying the whole process. Moreover, this plugin will help you utilize the free shipping to the maximum and boost your average order value.
So, are you ready to set up free shipping and boost your AOV?